


Variations on a Theme

by ColebaltBlue



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-13
Updated: 2010-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColebaltBlue/pseuds/ColebaltBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Dana Scully is a medical examiner for the city and county of San Francisco when she is assigned the Jane Doe #19292. In Washington, D.C. behavioral sciences unit FBI agent Fox Mulder becomes interested in Jane Doe #19292 and heads out to San Francisco to investigate. The rest, they say, is history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All artwork by the lovely TLynnFic.

* * *

_3:31am  
May 10, 1993  
Golden Gate Park  
San Francisco, CA_

He bent over the shallow trench, measuring with his eyes, what would become a grave for the small body wrapped in black plastic lying beside him. There was nothing manic about his movements, nothing sensational, nothing Hollywood. Instead, he was mechanical, detached, and emotionless – he had a job to do and he was doing it. The trench wasn't deep enough, he decided. A dog or something else would smell the body too quickly and attract attention to it too soon. Digging a grave was a science, he told himself as he tightened his grip on the worn shovel handle. Too deep and he risked the body not being found when it needed to be found. Too shallow and he risked the loss of crucial evidence; evidence his employers wanted to be found along with the body.

He rammed the shovel into the dirt again. This wasn't the ideal site to bury a body, the earth was too hard-packed to make digging easy, it was very public and he risked exposure at any second. If it had been up to him, the body would have simply disappeared, tucked away where no one would ever find it. But, his employers were insistent, we want the body found, they had told him, not like some of the others. So, like the depth of the grave, the risk of exposure and dirt were calculations too. If the right investigator caught the case, he would seem cold and calculating, exact and methodical. Then, the investigator would ask why, which was exactly what he wanted.

The bushes rustled and he paused, breathing shallowly through his mouth. The night was moonless, dark, and this part of the park not lit. The bushes held a few transients, long since fallen into drug and alcohol induced stupors. At best they wouldn't remember a thing, at worst they were such unreliable witnesses and no investigator would listen to what they had to say – even if it was the truth. Still, it wouldn't do to have a drunk and lost person stumble across him while trying to take a short cut through the park. While he was far enough away from the well-lit paths to reduce that risk, but the necessity of the body needing to be found quickly dictated he was still fairly close. Accidents happened. He shoveled a little bit harder, sacrificing stealth for speed.

A short while later he was satisfied with the trench. It was just long enough for the contents of the black plastic tarp laying on the ground next to him, just deep enough to keep from being discovered tomorrow and shallow enough that the smell would be noticeable to any human nose within a day or two.

The man carefully spread a new black plastic sheet on the bottom of the grave, and then picked up the fifty pound body laying next to the grave and carefully laid it in, arranging the sheet covering it so that elements could creep in, making a few tears. He was careful not to look at the body though as he tore the plastic. He hated the plastic that wrapped the innocence of the little girl, hated what it did to her, encasing her in a temporary body bag.

He quickly shoveled the dirt back over the body, and packed it down as best he could. He tossed some leaves and a few broken branches over it, brushing away the spots where his shoes had left impressions in the ground. His shoes had been disguised, melted treads and the wrong size, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. He wanted the body found, not him.

Stepping back, he looked at the grave; it blended in well enough to fool the casual passerby, but would glaringly obvious to a person looking for it. The recently disturbed dirt would give away the gravesite as much as the smell. Just before turning away, he paused and said a quick prayer in his native Russian over the body. It was one he had been taught as a child, a prayer for strength in the face of a dark world.

He slipped out of the park, blending into the shadows in a way that spoke of long practice. It was early enough that people were beginning to stir on the street, preparing to start their days. San Francisco was an odd city, only truly asleep between three and four am, after last call and the drunks made it home and before the financiers and those that served them were up in time to be at their desks in time for the opening of the markets in Europe. He had done his work well and timed it perfectly. They would be pleased with him.

An hour later he let himself into his small rented room in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin neighborhood and carefully removed the clothes he was wearing, bagging them up. He would burn them later, but first he reached for some tinfoil, his lighter, and a bit of smack. This work didn’t come naturally to him and he needed the release of something else before he called his employers. He felt the warmth suffuse his body as he inhaled the smoke rising from the foil. His mind let go and he let the waves of euphoria wash over him. He felt his consciousness slipping from his fingers and smiled to himself, the heroin wouldn’t let him panic as it moved throughout his body, stealing his life one drowsy happy moment to the next.

* * *

 _8:07 am  
May 13, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

"Hey, Doc, we had one come in overnight for you."

Dr. Dana Scully's looked up from the reports in her hand as she walked into the room. Her assistant George was standing at the only occupied autopsy table holding another file in his hand. She glanced at the body and noticed the small size almost immediately, her lips pressed together briefly. A kid, she thought to herself, those are always the hardest, the kids.

“She was found in Golden Gate Park last night by a couple of drunk kids most likely looking to check a few off their been there done that list,” George said with a smile as he placed the file down on the end of the table. Scully allowed herself a brief quirk of the lips, acknowledging the dry humor of George’s tone. His rough British accent and dark curly hair made his gallows humor seem charming rather than dark and he used it to his full advantage.

She walked up to the deceased still encased the body back and tried to distance herself from it. George moved about behind her, prepping for the autopsy. That's why she liked George; he worked smoothly, quietly and without fuss. His quiet professionalism would be an asset today.

"Thank you, George," she said, returning to the shelves near the door and depositing her coffee cup there, next to George’s rapidly cooling cup of tea. She reached for the yellow smock from stack beside her on the lower shelf and pulled it on, tightening the strings around her waist. She sighed as she rolled the sleeves up, wondering yet again why they didn’t make the smocks in anything other than a ‘universal’ size that was anything but. It didn’t help that she was the only female medical examiner there either.

She caught George’s smothered grin out of the corner of her eye. Unlike most of her colleagues, his amusement wasn’t condescending so she just ignored it. She tucked her red hair into her cap, tying the strings tightly as she turned to face George.

“How many today?” she asked, striding over to the autopsy table with purpose. It was always easier to face the kids when she had her hair up in a cap and layers of scrubs and smocks on. It was a sort of armor that disconnected her and allowed her to simply do her job. George appeared at her side, setting out the trays. She gloved her hands and reached out to assist him, noticing her small hands next to his larger ones, both covered in latex.

“Four, Doctor, three in the locker and then this one.”

She sighed, not looking forward to a day spent alternatively on her feet or crouched over her desk scribbling notes. “Right, well,” she answered, gesturing to the body. With any luck, everything would go smoothly and she’d be home and in a hot bath at a reasonable hour.

George nodded, understanding and handed her the file.

"Jane Doe, Caucasian, eight to ten, partially decomposed, found in Golden Gate Park yesterday evening, wrapped in plastic in a shallow grave," she murmured to herself as she read. Scully pressed her lips together. She made a notation to send out the medical examiner investigators first thing so survey the scene and take pictures.  
Taking a breath, she fortified herself. Kids are always the hardest, she thought as she unzipped the bag and folded it away from the body. Jane Doe had curly brown hair, and the awkward limbs of an active little girl. George began making notes, gleaning information for a description to try to match to the missing persons database: height, weight, and physical features. He examined the body for birthmarks as Scully clicked on the microphone hanging above the autopsy tray and began her external examination.

"Jane Doe, number 19292, eight to ten years of age, body shows signs of limited external trauma, bruising present at wrists and ankles, perimortem lacerations," she flipped the arms over, exposing the insides of the arms and felt her throat constrict, "evidence of IV lines in arms." The girl had been treated, somewhere, with something intravenous around the time of her death. Either a hospital would have record of recently treating her, or this case would turn out to be worse than she thought.

They moved to flip the body over and she saw George pause, with his hand under the girl's neck. Scully leaned over to move the girl's hair out of the way. Her neck was a raw and open wound. It looked partially healed and then reinjured, indicating it occurred while she was still alive. Torture, she thought to herself. She glanced at George and he met her look briefly. He had the same thought, she knew. This was going to be harder than she thought. She was a medical examiner, she thought, she had chosen this career to give a voice to those who could no longer speak. But some days, days like today, it was hard enough she occasionally thought about that cushy job in research she had turned down. Days like today, she thought about calling up Daniel, cashing in on her favor, and getting that teaching job. Some days, it was just hard.

An hour later she clicked off the tape recorder. There was no obvious cause of death, no fatal wound, but plenty of small ones. There were bruises on the body, but none finger-shaped. There were cuts and burns, but the cuts looked clean, as if made by a scalpel and the burns looked electrical in nature. Her stomach had almost betrayed her as she had done her examination for sexual trauma, but calmed slightly when she found none.

At first glance, it was a classic case of an abused child, body broken and shut down by just too much trauma at too young of an age. But the lack of a fatal wound puzzled her. Some of the wounds looked older, but all were inflicted within the last few months and there was no scarring to indicate long-term abuse. In her experience, child abusers didn't start at eight years of age and sexual abuse was almost always present.

There was something else about the wounds that were bothering her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

The internal examination had revealed little more than the body of a probably healthy little girl with no traumatic internal injuries, healed or otherwise.

"Cause of death?" George asked.

"Undetermined, but please run a full screen on her blood work with a note to check for an extended panel, maybe we'll learn what those intravenous lines were for," Scully responded gesturing at Jane Doe's arms.

"George, can you also check hospital records, private and public, for a girl matching Jane Doe's description? Police records as well. Some of these wounds…" she trailed off, George nodded, thinking the same thing. "Please check the police databases and contact the FBI as well. Jane Doe had a home and family at some point."

* * *

 _6:32 pm  
May 14, 1993  
J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building  
Washington, D.C._

Special Agent Fox Mulder clicked on the desk lamp, illuminating his desk in a warm yellow island of light. The last agent leaving for the day had turned off the overhead lights twenty minutes before and the sun was on the other side of the building. He leaned forward, typing in the search query terms to the FBI database. His research was done for the day on his assigned duties. The next few hours would be spent looking for his sister in databases and police reports. She had disappeared two decades ago and he had never stopped looking for her. With the Internet and computerized databases, he spent his Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays following leads online.

His phone on his desk began ringing. He looked at it, knowing exactly who it was, visualizing her standing in his apartment even though he had changed the locks, with a take-out dinner in one hand and his phone in her other. He debated picking it up, not sure if he wanted the argument that would come. Mulder sighed, knowing if he didn't pick up, she'd just keep calling.

"Diana," he said.

"Fox, please don't tell me you are still there." Mulder rolled his eyes, she knew very well where he was, why he was there, and that he'd be there all night. The conversation went like this nearly every Friday night. He didn't respond.

"I brought you dinner, why don't you come home," she continued.

"I'm not hungry, Diana."

"Fox, you need to eat."

Would they ever say anything different? He knew how'd it go from here. They'd exchange a few terse words and he'd hang up the phone. He'd come home around midnight and find her sitting on his couch, plates of cold take-out in front of her. She'd stay if he didn't physically shove her out the door, but usually he just ignored her and fell asleep on the couch and she'd leave on her own in the middle of the night.

To an outsider their relationship looked unhealthy and full of passive aggressiveness – one would never know it had ended two years ago when Diana had left for Europe. She had returned suddenly a year ago and had been trying to do whatever she was trying to do ever since. She was nothing if not persistent.

Not feeling like having the discussion tonight he just simply hung up without answering. He then messaged his friends, asking for a spot on the couch to sleep and perhaps a pizza when he got there. He then got back to work and put Diana out of his mind. With any luck she'd be gone when he stopped in to feed his fish tomorrow.

He entered a description into the database and to his surprise, it flagged a report, he clicked on it. It was this morning by the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office. Jane Doe #19292 was her designation. The technical medical terms used in the report distanced Jane Doe from Samantha in his mind, but he couldn't help but feel for the little girl as he read the report, wondering if Samantha had been treated the same.

On a hunch, he entered a few more search terms into the database and he was rewarded when two more cases were flagged. Two were a coincidence; three was a pattern. He began a report for Patterson and checked the name of the medical examiner on the report. He'd contact the San Francisco medical examiner's office Monday morning regarding Jane Doe #19292 about the case. With any luck, he'd be there by Tuesday.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

8:23 am  
May 17, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA

Scully sat down at her desk, eyeing the folders in her inbox while she turned on her computer. Jane Doe #19292's sat on the top. She had entered it into the database Friday before she had left for the day. The blood panel wouldn't be back for another week or two, but she couldn't bring herself to file Jane Doe into her pending pile just yet, something was still bothering her about the case.

She reached and pulled the files that lay underneath it towards her, autopsy case notes from a few weeks ago that needed to be completed now that their lab work was back. She opened the first one and reached for the corresponding lab work file to make her follow-up notes.

Her phone rang.

"Scully," she answered. She frowned into the phone when she heard her boss's voice. He was asking about Jane Doe #19292.

"No, sir," she responded to his query about whether or not she had been able to find any reports from local hospitals about Jane Doe. George had been diligent about contacting emergency rooms, pediatric wards, and even social services. She had sent out notices to a few doctor's message boards inquiring if anyone in private practice had any knowledge about Jane Doe, but hadn't heard back. Perhaps someone had called the chief medical examiner?

"The FBI?" The news that the FBI had responded surprised her, quite frankly. If Jane Doe had been a kidnap victim or a missing person's case, George would've brought that to her attention right away. Her boss responded that an agent from the behavioral sciences unit was coming out to speak to them regarding the case. The idea of it being a serial case hadn't crossed Scully's mind when she had written her report and failed to find any match characteristics in the FBI databases to recent cases.

She hung up the phone.

"Did you find a cause of death?" came a male voice from the doorway, startling her out of her thoughts.

Scully looked up quickly to find a tall and lanky man leaning on the door jam. His legs and arms were crossed and his head cocked slightly to the side. There were dark smudges under his eyes, as if he had tried to apply black eye shadow and got it all wrong. His eyes were piercing hazel in color and held hers with a hint of something she decided to label as distrust, but she wasn't sure.

"Who are you?"

"Agent Mulder, FBI, did you find a cause of death?"

"How did you get in?" Scully asked, eyes scanning behind him, looking for his escort before focusing on him again.

"Through the door like everyone else, did you find a cause of death?"

Scully pressed her lips together, not sure if she liked he way this was starting off. "Cause of death?"

"Jane Doe 19292, did you find a cause of death?"

She glanced at the file in her inbox before looking back at him. He had followed her gaze and his sudden movement startled her as he stepped forward quickly, reaching for the file in one fluid movement. She placed her hand on it the same moment that he grabbed it, their eyes met.

"Who are you?" she said, a little bit more pointedly. He paused for a second, considering her, then let go of the file and took a step back.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI, behavioral sciences unit. I'm here about Jane Doe 19292." He paused, cocked his head to the side, took out his badge and ID and showed it to her. "Did they not tell you I was coming?" She took the badge.

She stalled for time, scrutinizing his I.D. His first name really was Fox. He was who he said he was, not that she really had any doubt. She looked up at him, considering, he glanced at the file again and she wondered what he was so eager to see. If he was here, he had most likely read the report in the database and the file would offer nothing more than a few pictures than the online report.

She raised an eyebrow at him, handing his badge back to him before indicating the seat in front of her.

"The cause of death remains undetermined," she finally answered.

He looked at the file again before returning his eyes to hers, asking permissions this time. She inclined her head, giving it. He leaned forward and picked up the file, opening it as he sat back.

Scully watched him for a moment, but he seemed utterly engrossed in the file, so she returned to typing up her reports and notes from yesterday's autopsies. He was distracting, sitting there across from her like he belonged in her office in a way that she never felt she had. She was startled when snapped the folder shut and retuned it to her inbox. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking at her.

"What do you think killed her?"

Scully was puzzled. She had already answered that question. "I won't know that until I get toxicology back. And even then, I may not know." She paused, then looked at him, "you know from the report that it wasn't external trauma, why are you asking?"

"I didn't ask what killed her, I asked what you think killed her."

Speculation was not something she did easily, preferring to work with the facts as they laid out in front of her. Conjecture did a great disservice to the dead and could easily taint your findings, leading to false conclusions.

"I don't speculate, Agent Mulder."

"Try."

Scully shook her head and looked back at her computer screen, wondering what the consequences would be if she threw him out of her office. She pressed her lips together as she considered.

"Fine, I'll go first," he continued. "I don't think you'll find anything conclusive on the toxicology report, a series of drugs, suggestions of immuno-deficiencies, signs of drug therapies, but nothing fatal. I think you'll find signs of subtle torture, but nothing conclusive." Mulder sat back and looked at her, daring her to respond to his conjecture.

She waited, considering his purpose and his interest in the case. Finally, she answered, "I don't speculate, Agent."

She wasn't sure what she expected his reaction to be, but the slow smile was not it. The corners of her mouth twitched in response. "What is your interest in this case, Agent Mulder?"

His demeanor changed, a guarded look came over his face and he sat up just a bit. It was a strange change for someone from the FBI looking into innocuous-seeming Jane Doe cases.

"I'm looking into connections to a cold case."

"Of victims similar in profile to Jane Doe?"

He nodded in response, but maintained his guarded look.

"I hadn't heard of a possible connection. Has one been established indicating this could be a serial case?"

His eyes narrowed, considering her. She felt as if she was being judged for something. Like when her brothers used to look her up and down before refusing to let her into the "boys only" forts despite her offering up the use of sling-shot if she could only join.

"It hasn't yet."

She wasn't sure what to make of that, perhaps the connections were tenuous at best, perhaps there weren't enough cases or details to establish a pattern. "What case does this Jane Doe connect to?" Scully found herself sucked in, despite herself.

"A disappearance back east of a little girl."

"A disappearance? With no remains? How does that connect to Jane Doe?" She could see Mulder begin to shut down and close off to her questions. She decided to try a new tactic. "When was this disappearance?" Maybe Mulder was looking for the kidnapped girl to turn up as a body.

It apparently was the wrong question to ask. A mask fell over his face, "nineteen seventy three."

"Mulder! That's twenty years ago! If that girl was still alive she'd be almost thirty and not turning up as an 8 year-old buried in a shallow grave in Golden Gate Park."

He answered her with a dark look, "thank you, Doctor Scully." He stood up and reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. Scully's look softened, she could tell that she had screwed up. He was scribbling something on the back of the card. He handed it to her, "you can reach me at this hotel, please contact me as soon as you have more information, I'll be in town for a few more days."

He turned to walk about. "Agent Mulder," she said. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. "I was planning on stopping by the place where she was found this evening…"

Mulder's face relaxed slightly and he nodded. "I'd like to join you, please call me before you go." He left with an abrupt grace in his lanky form.

Scully looked at the card in her hand. He was staying in a hotel off of Van Ness and had included his cellular phone number on the back. She hadn't been planning on going to the park tonight, or even to see Jane Doe's spot in Golden Gate Park at all, but Mulder intrigued her, his interest in the case intrigued her and his apparent belief that it was connected to a twenty year-old kidnapping intrigued her.

She picked up her phone to cancel dinner plans with Ethan.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

_2:23 am  
July 12, 1993  
SleepTite Inn, room 112  
Omaha, Nebraska_

It was something straight out of a Douglas Preston novel, Mulder decided. At first it seems almost paranormal in nature, but there is always a logical explanation at the end of the rabbit hole.

It was another night in another hotel room in another city in America. Serial killers were still on the loose and each case just seemed to weigh more heavily on his waking mind. Tonight, his mind was calmed by a glass of scotch and pay per view porn on the television. He'd seen this one before – the scotch was more help in quieting his brain than the hairy man and no-tan-lined woman gyrating fuzzily on the screen.

There had been no more Jane Does since the case in San Francisco months ago. Scully had taken him to the site where Jane Doe was found, but the police tape was long gone and there wasn't any sign or indication of what had occurred there beyond some recently disturbed dirt. There weren’t even stuffed animals or photos that usually memorialized missing children and it was disconcerting to both of them. He remembered the way that her small frame had shifted, head bowed with her hair obscuring most of her face. Her lips had been moving gently in a soft prayer for Jane Doe. That was the first glimpse he had of Scully beyond the no nonsense exterior of a medical examiner and he kept it with him.

Blinking shiny eyes up at him, she had asked about the case from 1973, and he had given her a rough overview, leaving out the important details that Samantha was his sister and some of his crazier theories about the nature of her disappearance. Then, she had probed him over what he thought the connections were and he discussed cases of other abducted children who were never discovered, or discovered children who were never abducted. He had told her of his suspicions that she'd never find Jane Doe's identity because she didn't have one.

They had chatted over a late dinner at an Italian bistro after their stop at the park. He had asked her why someone with her interest in physics had chosen medicine. Scully had been surprised and suspicious to discover he had read up on her, but she had answered candidly, and refused to be intimidated by it. He had been charmed by her forthrightness and unconventional good looks, but completely bowled over by her outright intelligence and willingness to work with whatever he threw at her.

He had left town a few days later when the toxicology report had predictably been inconclusive and he had run out of excuses for Patterson. Before he had left, Scully had met him at his hotel's bar to give her a copy of the report, but hadn't stayed long, keeping her distance from him. He had asked her for a copy of the final report and with a notation of where in the pauper's grave Jane Doe would be buried. Scully had given him a small and sad smile before nodding her head. The last image he had of her was watching as she gathered up her things and put on her coat before striding out of the bar only ten minutes after she had walked in. Two weeks later he had received a fax at the FBI.

He hadn't heard from the medical examiner since then. Mulder wasn't sure if that was because she hadn't seen anything, or because she hadn't bothered to call him if she did. He hoped it was the former and not the latter, but he wasn't sure why. Sometimes, late at night, he thought about sending her an email or leaving her a voice mail, but he never got any further than thinking about it.

She was cute, he decided, in a cute sort of way, but not conventionally attractive, and certainly not his type. First of all, she was younger than him, he thought sardonically. The scene on the TV shifted and he watched as the two actors on the screen stumbled through a few lines of bad dialogue before it faded out to a scene of the girl clutch the doorway and the guy fucking her from behind. The actress’ face once again froze into something she probably thought was sexy. The guy just grunted. Physically, Dana Scully wasn't his type either. It was strange, he thought as he stared at the two actors on the screen, he wasn't what he'd call attracted to her, but he also couldn't quite stop thinking about her either. He liked her because she was forthright and honest, not because she was attractive he decided.

Mulder leaned over and hit a button on his open laptop, starting the modem again, hoping that this time he might have an email to distract him from the bad porn he was using to distract him from the photos that were spread out around him on the bed that were somehow making him think of Scully.

He looked back at the pictures as the modem whined away. This current case was frustrating. They had a serial killer out in the cornfields outside of Omaha, but he seemed to be more interested in mutilating cattle than people. Or at least that seemed to be the pattern. Cow kills in between human kills. They only thing that made him think they were linked was the patterns of the cuts – and the fact that both were skinned. Serial killers usually began with animals, small ones, before moving on to humans. They didn't kill cows, then humans, and then humans and cows at the same time.

At least he was able to explain the skinning, figures that he'd catch a serial killer interested in making a human/bovine leather three-piece suit. They had found the suit this morning, being prepared in an old barn behind an old farmhouse they had connected to their suspect's family. It was almost textbook perfect, yet so strange. Unfortunately, the suit they found contained only old kills in its material, they were still searching for a killer and what was probably a brand new three-piece leather suit. Maybe with matching loafers, Mulder mused.

For him though, the case was largely over. He'd written the profile and set the FBI team on the right path to the killer. It was obvious now who they were hunting and he seriously doubted it'd take longer than a day or two to close in and find him. In fact, if they had listened to him, they'd be raiding the site right now. It was time for him to move on to his next case, probably before he had a chance to go home, if past experiences held true.

The modem had stopped and he glanced at the screen. A new email. From his friends. He clicked on it. Another Jane Doe, this time found just north of San Francisco in Muir Woods. He sat up and read the notes in the email again, copied directly off the database they had hacked. Jane Doe had been discovered a few days ago in a shallow grave not far off of a path in the woods.

Excited, he shut off the lights and shoved the pictures over. He fell asleep a few minutes later as the scene on the TV shifted again, this time to two girls on the kitchen counter.

* * *

 _8:02 am  
July 12, 1993  
San Francisco Medical Examiners  
San Francisco, CA_

The phone was ringing as Scully let herself into her office. She managed to set her coffee down without spilling it and reached for her phone.

"Doctor Scully," she answered.

"Hi, it's me."

She paused for a second, wondering whom "me" was.

"Agent Mulder," she said, smothering a smile. "How are you?"

"Fine, Scully, I've got another one for you."

Normally she was annoyed when whomever she was conversing with automatically assumed she was already in on the conversation. Usually it was a tactic of intimidation in her male-dominated field, but she knew that wasn't Mulder's intention or purpose.

"Another Jane Doe?"

"Yes, in Mill Valley."

"That's not my jurisdiction, Mulder," she responded.

"Can you look into it, see if there are any similarities to Jane Doe 19292? ME to ME?"

That wasn't the way it worked, but she sensed the enthusiasm in his voice and she remembered the gentle and respectful way he treated her own Jane Doe. He was the first and last person to show any interest in that body and for that she felt she owed him a little more than an immediate and quick dismissal.

"I'll call," she conceded.

She could hear his grin through the phone. "Thank you," he replied. He checked to ensure she had his contact information at Quantico and quickly hung up. She looked over the files on her own desk before sighing and picking up her phone to call the Marin County Medical Examiner despite the fact that she knew she should probably wait a few days first. She called anyway.

They had been guarded when she had asked to see the case files, but had agreed to have final reports couriered to San Francisco after she explained the possible connection to a Jane Doe of hers and had promised not to do any independent investigation of the case. Scully wasn't sure if she'd ever understand territorialism.

She wouldn't have the reports for a few days though, so she put it out of her mind and got back to the work at hand.

The report had arrived a few days later and she eagerly opened it and read it over. Jane Doe #013139 was, on the surface dissimiliar to Jane Doe #19292. So much so that Scully wondered if anyone would have ever thought to connect the two cases. But, as she read the report she noticed that the similarities were there, subtle, but there. She wondered more than once if she was even making connections where they didn’t belong after listening to Mulder a little too much, but she was sure she wasn’t. She had typed up a copy and emailed it to Mulder. He had responded a few days later with a report of a missing child in Sacramento. As far as Scully knew, everyone but Mulder was still treating all these cases as unrelated.

That evening, news of the Emily Sims case broke. Emily Sims had disappeared from her family home the night before when her parents were out at party. Mr. Sims worked in the Silicon Valley for an Internet start-up and Mrs. Sims stayed at home. The investigation had initially looked into the babysitter, especially when all she could remember was bright lights, what felt like an earthquake, and then blackness. Scully started when she read the quotes by the babysitter, a band tightening in her chest as she recalled Mulder’s description of the night his sister disappeared. She wondered when coincidences ceased to be coincidences any more.

She had mentioned the case to Ethan and he had responded that interviewing the Sims family had been more than impossible for news reporters since the initial story and that it seems Mr. Sims had hired a family spokesman to speak to the press. Scully emailed Mulder that night about it.

The next night, as she stood at the microwave reheating yesterday’s Indian food, Ethan casually mentioned that Mrs. Sims had been found dead of an apparent suicide that afternoon. Scully was lying awake next to a snoring Ethan when her phone rang. She glanced at the clock, wondering who could be calling at that hour and caught it before it rang again.

"Hello?" she asked softly.

"Hey, it's me." Scully smiled when she heard his voice. "Did you hear about Mrs. Sims?"

"Yeah. What do you think it means?" Scully asked.

"I think it means that she was a liability and they had to get rid of her."

"What?" she was puzzled at his response.

He sighed and they were both silent for a moment.

"Mulder, it's late."

"I know," he responded softly. "I'm coming out there, I'll see you in a few days."

He hung up without saying goodbye. Scully replaced the phone and stared at it in the blue light of night. Ethan shifted beside her.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"No one," she answered.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

_7:47 am  
July 18, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

Dana Scully faltered a step when she walked in the front doors of the ME's office and spied a vaguely familiar form sitting in one of the chairs in lobby. Mulder's head snapped up when he heard the door she had just enter through close.

"Doctor Scully," he said, rising to his feet.

"Agent Mulder," she responded, tipping her head to the side. "How did you get in? The building isn't open yet."

He smiled at her, but didn't answer. She smiled back.

"Are you here to see me?"

"Yes, if you have a moment."

"What is this about?" No new cases had come up and they hadn't spoken since his phone call in the middle of the night a week before. She had expected him to call when he came out, not show up at her office.

"Emily Sims."

She turned and headed down the hallway towards her office. He followed.

"I'm not sure what that has to do with me, Mulder. The Sims are in Sacramento and Emily is missing, there's no body."

They arrived at her office and she juggled papers and coffee while she unlocked it and let them both in. Mulder seated himself in the chair across from her desk. She set her stuff down and settled in. He leaned forward and handed her a folder.

She opened it.

"They're Emily Sims's medical records."

"I can see that," she replied glancing them over before shutting the file. "Mulder, what are you doing with these? Why are you showing these to me? How did you get them?"

"That's not important. Read them."

"Mulder, I can't read someone else's medical records without permission. At least not like this!" Her voice had lowered to a whisper.

He glanced around and then leaned forward with a twisted smile. "No one will know," he whispered. "Just read them Dr. Scully, I need your opinion on them."

Scully sighed and then opened the file against her better judgment. She scanned the top page again and then began looking through the papers. Emily's file was uncommonly thick, especially for someone her age. The summary itself was nearly three pages long. Scully thumbed through pages and pages of print outs describing tests and treatments that included drug compounds she didn't recognize.

There had been no reports in the media of special medical conditions for her or anything so she was surprised to read about the treatments and therapies Emily seemed to be undergoing. Scully reached for her glasses and looked more closely at one of the later reports.

"Mulder?" she asked, looking up at him. She held the file open to a page describing a treatment for Emily. It included a picture of her pale and pinched sweat-drenched face. Mulder was watching Scully with a knowing look on his face.

"You see it too?"

"What is this? Where did you get this information?"

"That doesn't matter," he replied, knowing that she had spotted the evidence of the same kinds of treatment that would explain Jane Doe 19292's injuries. The resemblance between the two had been minor, but the picture of Emily looking near death had made them look uncannily similar.

"I've never even heard of these facilities," Scully said, reading the names of the laboratories and treatment facilities printed on the report page. They were located in the Bay Area, and while not familiar with every private facility in the area, she hoped that at least through all of her years here she'd recognize names. Especially if she was as sick as she seemed to be.

"You wouldn't have. They don't exist."

"What? How can they not exist?"

Mulder took a deep breath. On his way out here he had convinced himself that he could trust Scully with the information he was about to tell her. His stomach tightened briefly when he thought of the last woman he had trusted with information and her betrayal. But, that was years of time and experience ago. Something told him that Scully wouldn't betray him. She may not believe him, but she wouldn't betray him. It was now or never, he though to himself.

"Scully, they're all connected. Samantha, Emily, the Jane Does, and the other little girls I've come across in my research. They're connected by their anonymity, their injuries, and their disappearances. I think they're being abducted, experimented upon, and I think that the Jane Does are the ones that didn't make it."

"Mulder, what you're suggesting-"

He continued, ignoring her interruption. "I think Mrs. Sims was silenced because she objected to Emily being taken. I think she couldn't handle it and they considered her a risk."

"Who?"

He ignored her, not even sure if he knew the answer to that question himself. "It's a pattern that's repeated in the family of the missing girls, they either keep quiet or they're killed."

"Mulder…" Scully said.

"Scully, I need your help. I'm so close to figuring this out. I need your help." He hoped he didn't sound too desperate.

Scully stopped and looked at him, not sure what to say. "Who is Samantha, Mulder?" she asked, sensing that she was the key to all of this. "What is she to you?"

Mulder hung his head and was quiet for a moment. "She was my sister," he answered, his voice slightly muffled.

Scully sighed. This was dangerous. This was more than dangerous. Mulder was too close to this case and they both knew it.

"Scully, I'm not crazy," he said, pleadingly. He wasn't sure whom he was trying to convince.

Scully started to shake her head no. Maybe he wasn't crazy, but he was close. "Mulder, you're too close to be objectionable here, it's led you to draw conclusions that just aren't there."

"Scully…"

Scully pressed her lips together. Something had bothered her about Jane Doe 19292 and then Emily Sims. She didn't think Mulder was right, but she also wasn't sure he was entirely wrong either.

"All right," she said, against her better judgment. Mulder looked relieved and worried at the same time.

He stood up before she had a chance to say anything more, as if she'd change her mind at any second. He turned to go, then stopped and turned back.

"Thank you, Scully."

"What do you need me to do, Mulder?"

"I'll meet you for dinner? Eight? That Italian place from last time?"

Scully nodded in response. She looked down at her desk and he left. Emily Sims' file was open on it. Not knowing exactly why, she closed it and put it in her locking file drawer, in the back, and let it slide down between two files, hiding it as best she knew how. She couldn't help but feel she had just fell down a rabbit hole.

* * *

She spent the rest of the day, hard at work on her normal caseload. Lake most large city medical examiners, they were understaffed and overworked. The San Francisco ME's was an old boy's club and Scully couldn't help but feel like she'd gotten the job there so that she could be a token female doctor on staff. George was good to her, nice, polite, and as friendly as he could be, but other than him, she was ignored for the most part. Unless someone had a case they didn't want or a problem.

It worked for her though. She did good work and despite the fact that she wasn't "in" with her coworkers, they knew that. There was a sense of grudging respect from her fellow doctors even if it was tinged with condescension or she was outright ignored. It meant, though, that she could do her job in peace, her decisions weren't questioned, and if she asked for something then she usually got it without a fight.

By five her feet hurt and she stank. Being generally ignored by her coworkers was only beneficial to a point, and that was the point at which she got all the bodies that no one else wanted to deal with, despite the fact that policy was to distribute bodies evenly. This one had been discovered in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin and had been dead for days before the complaints of the stink were numerous enough the police realized it wasn't just the usual hotel stink the drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes that occupied the building were smelling.

But, a suspicious death was a suspicious death and an autopsy had to be done. She had taken samples, of the dirt under his finger and toenails and what body fluids she could. The organs were in such a state she wasn't sure if a determination would be possible of what killed the man. Although no one would claim the body and no one would probably care, she still did her level best on the autopsy. It was her job after all.

She hoped to get done in time to go home and shower before dinner, but now she wasn't sure if she could. She had also wanted to go over the Jane Doe from Marin's file before she went so she could talk to Mulder about it. Then, Ethan had called and asked her what she was up to for the night. He was at her apartment and wanted to know if she'd be home soon. If she went home to shower, she'd have to explain why she was leaving again and she wasn't sure if she wanted to. Scully sighed. Some days… she thought to herself.

Checking the time, she pulled Jane Doe's file towards her and started scanning it. It wasn't very complete, but the pictures of this Jane Doe's injuries were similar to her Jane Doe's. She pulled 19292's file out from her drawer and looked over it again, holding up the two Jane Does side by side. Now, it was more apparent that there could be a connection between the two. With Marin's Jane Doe's photo next to 19292's, even the physical resemblance of the girls was striking.

Scully opened Emily Sims' medical records again and looked through the thick reports from her treatments. She grabbed a pen and piece of paper and scribbled down some of the drug compounds. She'd have tests run on 19292's blood in the morning. Maybe there was a connection, maybe there wasn't, but a test wouldn't hurt and it would bring peace of mind. If there were, she'd see about getting tests done on Marin's Jane Doe.

She glanced at the clock and realized with a shock she'd been at work on the files for over two hours. "Shit," she muttered to herself, hastily shoving papers back into the files. She opened her desk drawer and shoved the files in the back, letting them drop, before she shut it and locked it. Usually she kept the keys in her desk, in case anyone needed her files, but she dropped them into her purse instead tonight. Maybe what Mulder said got to me, she thought.

She hurried to the work locker room, calculating how much time she had for a shower before she'd have to catch a cab or be late. She stunk too bad not to take a shower, but she wasn't sure if five minutes would do the trick. Maybe she'd just be late. Not having time and being pretty sure she was the last doctor at the morgue, she just dropped her purse and her bag on the bench in front of her locker and left it open as she went into the showers.

As quickly as she could she scrubbed herself with the harsh soap provided by the morgue. It was hard on the skin, but usually managed to take most of the stink off. She'd smell like antiseptic when she got to dinner, but that was better than smelling like autopsy. She turned off the spray and cocked her head as she thought she heard the door to the locker room close. She was one of only a few females on staff and she wondered who had come in, or just left. Curious, she wrapped her hair in a towel and stepped out.

"Hello?" she called out, but no one answered. She felt strange though, as if someone was in the locker room still. "Hello?" she asked again, heading towards her locker. As she rounded the corner, the motion of the door closing caught her eye. Someone had been in the locker room. But, they hadn't answered her. Scully suddenly felt dirty and violated. She hurried over to her stuff and got dressed as quickly as she could. As she left, she shook her head, not quite able to let go of the feeling that something was not quite right.

* * *

Mulder was waiting for her when she got to the restaurant. He smiled at her and rose just slightly out of her seat as she sat down.

She smiled wryly, "I see someone taught you manners at some point."

Mulder looked chagrinned and gave her a quick grin. "That's what East Coast money will get you, all manners and no class."

Scully let the smile drop from her face. Mulder furrowed his brow at her.

"What happened?"

"What?" she asked.

"What happened?"

Scully briefly considered denying it, but she was pretty sure Mulder would be able to tell she was obfuscating and she wasn't sure he'd let it go. "Something happened in the locker room right before I left work," she began. "I'm not quite sure what, but I'm pretty sure someone was in there and left right as I got out."

Mulder looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"I called out when I thought I heard something, but nobody answered. Then, I saw the door closing. I don't know why no one would answer if they were in there."

Mulder nodded. "Do you think it was one of the other doctors?"

Scully shook her head. “No, I'm pretty sure I was the only one left down there."

"Is anything missing?"

"No, my wallet and cell phone were still there. So were my clothes."

"Did you have any files with you, anything related to the Jane Does or Emily Sims?"

"No, those can't leave the morgue." Scully paused. "It must've been my imagination."

Mulder looked like he didn't believe her, but let the subject drop. The placed their order.

"I drove around to the addresses listed in Emily's medical records," Mulder began. He reached down into a bag he had on the floor next to him and pulled out a stack of pictures. "Do these look like they could be medical facilities that'd have the equipment necessary to treat her?" he asked, handing them to her.

Scully looked through the pictures. Most of them were of deserted commercial business park storefronts. Some of the names on the doors didn't match the name of the laboratories that Mulder had scribbled on the back of the photos. He had obviously done some snooping and there were a few shots that looked like they had been taken through mail slots of empty, dusty interiors.

"It's hard to say, but no, I'd say that none of these look like active medical practices," Scully replied as she looked at the photos. "You never know sometimes, with the private clinics," she added.

Mulder looked satisfied.

She knew she should bring up the issue of the similarities between Emily and her two Jane Does, but she wasn't sure if she did that she'd be able to get Mulder to talk about Samantha. Samantha was at the root of his investigation into these little girls, and Scully guessed, the key to both Mulder and his obsession with the cases. She wanted to know more before she delivered what he'd take to be as a confirmation that he was right all along about these cases.

"Tell me about Samantha," she asked, leaning back and resting her hands on the table.

Mulder's expression changed, becoming more guarded.

"She was… is my sister."

Scully cocked her head to the side. Mulder sighed in resignation.

"She was abducted in 1973 from our house on Martha's Vineyard while my parents were out and I was babysitting." Scully knew from the way he talked about her, she had never been found.

"I've been looking for her ever since." The simple sentenced carried a lot of weight, and although she didn't know Mulder well, she could tell that he meant that he had been looking ever since that day, that his entire life had been dedicated to finding his sister.

"So, these monsters that you profile as part of your work with the FBI?"

Mulder nodded, understanding what she was asking, "I'm hoping to find out who took her."

"Were there any clues?"

"You mean, besides the fact that my father never spoke to my mother again?"

"Well, that isn't-" Scully began. Mulder was already shaking his head no, knowing what she was trying to say.

"No, it was something else. No, no trace of her, and I can't even remember what happened. I saw a bright light and blacked out."

Mulder was quiet as their waiter arrived and put their salads in front of them. Scully picked up her fork and started eating right away. Mulder just stared at his for a moment.

"A few years ago, I thought I had found her killer. A vacuum salesman had been on the island that summer and he had been connected to a string of kidnappings all over the east coast."

"But it wasn't?" Scully asked, around a mouthful of lettuce when Mulder paused.

"The body he said was my sister's … it wasn't her's. I had it DNA tested against mine and everything."

Scully was impressed, DNA testing was in its infancy, but it had very strong practical applications and it was smart of Mulder to try it.

"Well, she was someone's little girl. And you found her," Scully said, compassionately.

Mulder sighed. "Yes, but when I went to my father to tell him, he told me to drop it."

Scully raised an eyebrow at him. Mulder grinned sardonically in reply.

"Well, he didn't use those words, but that was the general idea." Mulder ate a few bites of his salad mechanically. "I guess I knew I was on to something, though; it was the first acknowledgement my father had made of my sister's disappearance, one way or another."

Scully followed the pine nuts around her plate with the tines of her fork, finally managing to trap one. She lifted it to her mouth and caught Mulder's look. He smirked at her. She smiled and shook her head.

They were silent for a moment and Scully watched as Mulder picked a bit more at his salad. Their dinner arrived before either one of the broke the silence.

Scully ate a few bites of her gnocchi before she spoke.

"I may have found something today."

Mulder's demeanor changed suddenly. His fork stopped halfway to his mouth and he looked surprised and annoyed at the same time.

"I think it may be possible that the three cases are related," she continued before he had a chance to recover. Mulder stared at her with impatience.

"Their physical resemblance is uncanny for three seemingly unrelated cases so close to one another. It’s like they could be sisters. And, the injuries that the other Jane Doe sustained could be related to my Jane Doe's. Nothing is conclusive, though."

"Scully!" Mulder began, excitedly.

She held up her hand, stopping him.

"It's similar, Mulder, but certainly not the same."

"But-"

"And, furthermore," she continued, "I don't have any proof."

She considered not saying anything to him until she had the results back, but figured she was in it up to her neck already, "I am, however, having my Jane Doe's blood tested for the same drugs that were listed in Emily's medical report."

Mulder looked excited. Scully shook her head; not knowing if that was necessarily good.

"That's excellent, Scully!"

"I don't know any more, and the tests may not show anything, Mulder. Try not to get too excited." Mulder waved his hand at her, as if to say he didn't care. Scully sighed, knowing that he was not going to ever let the cases go. Oh well, she thought, oh well.

They finished their dinner. Mulder had talked about past cases he had investigated and pestered Scully for opinions on whether or not they were connected to the current three cases. Scully reminded him constantly that they had no proof the cases were connected at all. It was a lively discussion and Scully could tell Mulder was enjoying himself. Although they were clearly on different pages when it came to these cases, she couldn't help but enjoy herself either.

They had stepped out into the cool San Francisco night as the restaurant and closed behind them. The North Beach neighborhood was still active and lively even at ten as crowds of people moved in and out of bars and a few shops that stayed open this late.

The night was balmy, rare for San Francisco in July, but a welcome treat and the locals and tourists alike seemed to be enjoying the fact that they could be out without jackets, a rarity at this time of year.

"Thanks for dinner," Scully said, as she scanned Columbus Avenue for a taxi. They were plentiful tonight and she looked back at Mulder just in time to catch a smile.

"No problem. I'll be in town for a few more days and I'll let you know if I find anything," he said. Scully nodded.

"Well…" she trailed off, then shrugged. "That sounds good." She gave him a half smile and turned towards the street. Stepping out a bit she raised her hand. She glanced back at Mulder as the cab slowed and pulled up next to her. He stepped forward as she opened the door and put his hand on the doorframe.

"See you," he said.

"See you," she replied as she got in. He closed the door for her and smiled before turning away. She watched him for a moment and then looked up at the review mirror. She blushed when she realized the cabbie had been watching her. "Van Ness and Pacific," she said softly and sat back as the cab pulled into traffic.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

_10:12 am  
July 19, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

Scully set her now cold coffee down on her desk along with her notes from the autopsy she just finished. She had left George to clean up while she went back to her office to type up the notes and submit her report. Her mind had been on the Jane Does and Emily all morning despite her best efforts to concentrate.

She had arrived home last night to find Ethan sitting in her living room, watching her TV. She'd given him a tired smile, but hadn't really wanted to deal with him. Instead of taking the hint and leaving, he'd pressed her on where she'd been and what she had been doing. So, she told him about the Jane Does and Emily Sims. Well, as much as she felt she could tell him, but she left Mulder's name out of it. Ethan hadn't said anything much beyond a comment on the strangeness of her getting wrapped up in something that wasn't really her problem. That had bothered her and she had gone straight into her bedroom and shut her door, leaving Ethan to let himself out.

Sighing, she sat down, wondering what to do about Mulder, the cases, and now Ethan. She pulled her chair up to her desk and looked at her desk, furrowing her brow. It looked like her folders were askew. She looked more closely, but couldn't tell if anything was missing. She grabbed the keys to her locked file drawer and opened it, but couldn't tell if anything had been looked through. She had her head bent over and was reaching for the file when a voice startled her.

"Doctor Dana Scully?"

She looked up, eyes wide in surprise and shoved the drawer closed a little too quickly. A man stood in her doorway, attractive, but not her type with chiseled features that were just a little too perfect. His eyes were pale and his hair neat and trim.

"Yes?"

"Hello," he said, striding forward and offering his hand. "I'm Special Agent Alex Krycek."

She shook it, warily. Another FBI agent?

"How can I help you Special Agent Krycek?"

"Oh, call me Alex, please," he replied with what Scully figured he must think was a disarming smile. She found it slightly smarmy. He sat down in the chair in front of her desk without being asked. Scully sat back and regarded him. "I'm here to talk to you about Jane Doe 19292."

Scully raised her eyebrow at him. "There seems to be a bit of interest in Jane Doe," she replied carefully.

Krycek smiled again, "Oh, well, if you're referring to Agent Mulder." He paused and leaned forward, "let's just say his interest is extracurricular while mine is official. What have you told him?"

Scully opened her mouth to reply when the question hit her. It wasn't about the case, or her files, or even Jane Doe, but about Mulder. She closed it again and looked at Krycek. He smiled back.

"What do you want to know about Jane Doe that isn't available through the medical examiner's office, Agent?"

Krycek stiffened slightly and sat up from his relaxed position. "Fine, what are your impressions of the Jane Doe case, doctor?"

"I don't speculate. I told Agent Mulder that as well," she replied, shortly. "If that is all?"

Krycek considered her from across her desk, but didn't respond. Scully took that as a yes.

"Excellent. Well, if you need anything else, Special Agent, I'm sure you can speak to our head medical examiner. I'm not really in a position to offer you any further information."

She looked at Krycek as he considered her. Just like she'd hoped, he stood up to go.

"Thank you for your assistance, Doctor," he said. He looked down at her desk and she followed his gaze down to her file drawer. She swallowed and looked up at him. He had a knowing half-smile on her face. He nodded once and turned to go, but paused in the doorway.

"Oh, Doctor Scully, if you should hear from Agent Mulder, please have him call his section chief. His absence from Washington is unauthorized, as is his investigation."

Scully sighed as Krycek disappeared around the corner. Well, that was unnerving, she thought to herself and definitely more than strange. She picked up her phone to call Mulder, but then set it back down. She wasn't sure if she should call him or not. Krycek had insinuated that his presence in California was unauthorized, as was his interest in Jane Doe, but aside from his first visit he hadn't told her he was investigation on official FBI business. She also doubted Emily Sims' file had been obtained via official channels at the FBI either.

What had she gotten herself into?

 

* * *

 _10:34 am  
July 19, 1993  
Sleep-Inn Motel  
San Francisco, CA_

Mulder sat on the edge of the hard hotel bed, his laptop open on the table in front of him with cords stretching into the phone jack and the electrical outlet in the wall. When the motel said free local calls, he wasn't sure if they meant for Internet connectivity, but he was taking advantage. He hit the reconnect button on his email again and watched as it slowly refreshed. A new email appeared from his friend Langly.

Call us, was all it read.

He picked up his cell phone and dialed their number.

"It's me," he said when it picked up on the other end. No one replied. "Come on guys, it's me, turn off the recorders."

"Mulder, how many times have we said not to call us on the cell phone, man?" Langly's voice asked him. "It's not secure."

"And the hotel line would've been better?"

"Do we have to go over phone protocol again?" he heard Frohike shout from the background. Mulder rolled his eyes even though they couldn't see it.

"I'm not going down to the pay phone right now. What do you have?"

"Hang on, we're not quite secure yet," Langly responded. Mulder heard a click and then a crackle. "There."

"Mulder, we've found something you might be interested in," Byers's soft voice came over the line. "It's a little girl, Jennifer Marlowe, she was just checked into the pediatrics ward of San Francisco General from their emergency department."

"She's sick, Mulder," Langly called out.

"Her intake sheet shows she's not doing well, but they don't know what's going on. She appears to be quite ill. We called you because she's similar to that Sims case and the two Jane Does."

"But she's still alive?" Mulder asked, jumping up from the bed and looking for his shoes.

"So far, but it doesn't look good."

Mulder hopped as he shoved his shoes on and balanced the phone against his ear as he attempted to button up his shirt.

"Where?"

"Fifth floor, room 122, bed B," Frohike said, obviously having taken the phone from Byers. "Mulder, be careful."

Mulder hurried down the hallway towards the pediatric unit. He didn't have a plan to get into the locked ward, but hoped his badge would be enough to let him through. The duty nurse was young and attractive and he moved forward with a smile that he knew from experience would usually work.

"Hi," he began, before she had a chance to ask who he was. He pulled out his FBI identification, "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm here about the girl in 122 B." He put a slightly questioning note in his voice and hoped the nurse would answer him, thinking she was being helpful.

She glanced at her computer screen.

"Jennifer Marlowe?" Mulder helpfully supplied.

The nurse nodded and looked back at the screen, unsure if she should let him back there. He heard the door to the ward open and close behind him, but didn't look, concentrating on the nurse.

"Agent Krycek didn't mention another agent. Does he know you're coming?"

Mulder was startled. The boys hadn't said anything about the FBI already being involved and he didn't know why they would in Jennifer's case.

"Krycek?" he asked, stalling for time.

"Yes, he's back there now," she replied.

"Well, I'll just go back there and see him," Mulder said, turning decisively and heading off down the hall. "Thank you," he called back over his shoulder, ignoring the incredulous look on the nurse's face.

A young man in a suit walked out of room 122 B and shut the door behind him. Mulder got a good look at him before he looked up and spotted Mulder striding down the hall. He smiled.

"Agent Mulder," he said as Mulder approached.

"Krycek. What are you doing here?"

Krycek smiled in response.

"I think the more important question is, what are you doing here, Agent Mulder." Krycek nodded at Mulder's surprised response. "What are you doing here Mulder?"

"Checking on Jennifer Marlowe and possible connections to the Jane Doe 19292 case," he answered, hoping Krycek wasn't aware of the specifics of Jane Doe 19292.

No such luck. 'The case that months ago you were specifically told to drop. The case that you managed to involve a San Francisco medical examiner in? Tell me, Mulder, does Doctor Scully know that you are so far outside of the scope of your job duties you're in danger of losing your job?"

Mulder narrowed his eyes at Krycek. The man knew too much. Far too much.

"I think it's interesting, Agent Mulder, the connections you've drawn between the Jane Does and Emily Sims. Are you here at Jennifer Marlowe's bedside because you hope to make another connection that doesn't exist?"

"What do you know about any of this, Krycek?"

"Doctor Scully was very helpful, Mulder, very helpful."

Mulder felt the sharp pain of betrayal from Scully. He thought she was on the same side he was, but if she shared information with Krycek, he wasn't so sure. Maybe she was even working with the other side.

"Oh, you didn't think she actually wanted to help you, did you, Mulder? You're far too trusting," Krycek chided with a triumphant look on his face.

Mulder shot Krycek a dark look and attempted to step around him to Jennifer Marlowe's room.

Krycek stopped him with a hand on his chest. Mulder looked down at it and looked back at Krycek. "Oh, I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Mulder. In fact, it would be best if you left now. Without a fuss. If you do I'll let you tell Patterson yourself when you'll be home."

Mulder could see he was getting nowhere with Krycek and as long as he was in the hospital he wouldn't get into Jennifer Marlowe's room. He turned, cutting his losses and stalked out of the pediatric ward. The nurse watched him go.

* * *

 _11:46 am  
July 19, 1993  
San Francisco, CA_

Mulder's breathing was labored as he climbed the hill while maintaining his running pace. He had left the hospital and ended up back at his hotel still angry from his exchange with Krycek. He had called the guys and asked them to dig up what they could about Krycek and to look a little more closely at Scully for him. Then, he decided to go for a run to clear his head.

He wasn't used to running hills, especially not the kind that San Francisco was famous for, but he found the effort it took both exhilarating as well as taxing. His calves burned on each step. It didn't answer his questions, though, about whom Krycek was and what his connection to Scully was. He didn't think she'd just give her files to him, especially when she was so guarded about them with him. As for Krycek, he wanted to know who he was and whom he worked for, but more importantly what he was doing in San Francisco at Jennifer Marlowe's bedside.

He made it back to his hotel and laid flat on his back, catching his breath before he showered and called the guys back to see what they had dug up. His mind had drifted to Scully again. Something in his gut, told him to trust her. His gut had also told him to trust Diana and he didn't like where that got him. It comes down to whether or not I trust my gut, he thought with irony. He heaved himself up off the bed and stumbled on his tired legs into the shower. He'd heard what the guys had to say first.

After dealing with the usual security features of calling in he got Byers on the line. "Mulder, this Alex Krycek that you asked us about, he's a bit of a mystery to us," Byers began.

"He's shady, Mulder," Langly called from the back.

"No, good, no good," Frohike added.

"What can you tell me about him, guys?"

"Well, he joined the Bureau a few years ago, a young upstart by all appearances, and has risen quickly through the ranks."

"A little too quickly!" Frohike shouted.

"What division is he in?" Mulder asked.

"Well see, that's the thing, Mulder my man," Langly said into the phone, having pulled it away from Byers, "he isn't."

"Isn't what?"

"In a division," Langly replied.

"He doesn't appear to report to anyone, or at least any one whose name we can find, Mulder," Byers said, having taken it back from Langly.

"Where was he before?"

"Nowhere, we can't find any record of him before he started in the academy and since graduating from there he was regularly and quickly promoted, but records on what cases he works, where he came from, everything just simply don't exist."

"Are you sure it's just not classified, Byers?"

"What do you take us to be, Mulder? Half-rate hackers?" Frohike yelled form the back.

Mulder pinched the bridge of his nose and hid a smile.

"Not you, Frohike, never you," he replied. "What about Scully?"

"Nothing new since the last time you had us look, Mulder," Byers answered.

"Frohike downloaded a picture of her, though, and is in love, “ Langly said. “He wants to know if her boyfriend looks like he could take him."

Mulder's eyes snapped open. "Boyfriend?"

"Yeah, didn't you know? Some reporter for the local news station."

"Anything on him?" Mulder asked.

"Not yet, but we can look for you," Langly answered.

Mulder thanked them and hung up the phone. He then typed an email to his friend in Senator Matheson's office letting him know he was on to something in California and his work would be easier if Patterson left him alone. That should get Patterson off his back, he thought.

Next, he thought about what to do about Scully. He didn't really need her help and could rely on the guys to hack the information he needed, but he liked working with her. He sighed, still unsure. Just because the boys didn't turn anything up didn't mean there wasn't anything there. She seemed straightforward enough, but he had no way of checking that she was who she said she was. Deciding to take a chance he sent her a short email, 'meet me at the place where they found her body at 7,' and didn't sign it. If she showed he'd ask her about Krycek. He'd know at that point whether or not to trust her, he told himself.

* * *

 _6:58 pm  
July 19, 1993  
Golden Gate Park  
San Francisco, CA_

As Scully approached the spot where they found Jane Doe's body she could see Mulder's lanky form pacing the site, head down, chewing on a cuticle. He looked up at her as he approached and offered her a half-hearted smile.

"Hey," he said by way of greeting.

"Mulder? What is the meaning of this?" She asked sharply, annoyed at the summons that had arrived in her inbox earlier that day.

He appeared taken aback.

"This," she said, waiving her hand around the spot. "This covert secret agent meet me in the parking garage of the Watergate building crap. Are you going to pass me a message written in invisible ink that I'll need to use my decoder ring on?"

"Scully," Mulder began, but then stopped and sighed. It wasn't worth beating around the bush, he decided. "Why did you give the files to Alex Krycek?"

Scully looked shocked. "What?"

"Alex Krycek, why did you give him the files?"

"Mulder?" she asked, questioningly, not sure where the accusations were coming from.

"Did Alex Krycek come to see you?" Mulder tried again.

"Yes, this morning. He asked about Jane Doe and warned me about you, but I didn't give him any files." She could feel a knot forming in her belly. Her askew files, the mysterious visitor in the locker rooms, Mulder’s accusations were all starting to add up.

"He had information from them, and knew about Jennifer Marlowe before I did,” he said, implications clear.

"Jennifer Marlowe?"

She could tell Mulder was a bit surprised and frustrated and wondered if the reason he seemed worked alone was because he didn’t trust anyone. Accusing people of slipping your adversaries information was no way to earn any sort of trust in return either.

"A little girl. She was admitted to San Francisco General sick with what I believe Emily Sims had."

"Mulder," Scully said, "even I don't know what Emily Sims had – if anything. She's missing and the family has released no information on illnesses. All I have are probably illegally obtained medical records of drugs given and treatments prescribed by doctors and medical facilities that don't exist."

"Scully, Emily Sims was sick."

Scully rolled her eyes, annoyed with their conversation.

"Is this why you called me out here? To accuse me of giving files to someone and to tell me that Emily Sims was sick?"

"No," Mulder said, softly. "Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Give Krycek the files?"

Scully gave Mulder a hard look before answering. "No," she said coldly. Mulder heard the unsaid condemnation for even thinking it. Scully wondered if that was guilt that flashed in his eyes.

Scully sighed and then seemed to relax, deciding it was. "Tell me about Jennifer Marlowe."

"She was admitted to SF general today. Her admitting sheet said she was nauseated, lethargic, and pale with slow motor responses. Her temperature was up and her blood pressure and heart beat elevated. There were also marks on her, similar to those on the Jane Does."

"Did you go to see her?"

"Yes, but I couldn't get in, Krycek was there."

Scully nodded at Mulder, looking thoughtful.

"When I asked my friends to acquire her records for me later this afternoon they told me they were gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes, like she never existed."

Scully's brow furrowed. “That's impossible."

Mulder shrugged. "I try to believe three impossible things before breakfast," he responded with a wry smile. Scully smiled back.

"Do you think Alex Krycek had something to do with this?"

"Yes," Mulder answered simply. "You said he came to see you?"

"Yes," she responded. "He tried to be charming and asked me about Jane Doe," she said, gesturing to the ground they were standing on.

"Did you tell him anything?"

"He asked me to speculate."

Mulder chuckled at her reminder of their first conversation.

"I don't think he was too pleased with how the conversation went. Mulder, I thought you told me your interest in this case was extracurricular?"

Mulder nodded.

"Then why is he so interested in it?"

"I don't know, Scully. I don't even know who he works for in the Bureau or how he even found out about it."

Scully looked thoughtful for a minute.

"If I could get ahold of Jennifer Marlowe's admitting records, can you look over them for me?"

"Mulder…"

"Please?"

Scully nodded, looking like she already regretted the decision. He smiled at her. "All right, Mulder, it's been fun, but I have to go." She turned to leave, but stopped. "Oh, the local TV news station is running a feature story on Emily Sims tomorrow, by the way," she said before adding a good night. With that she left the park, Mulder’s eyes on her back the whole time.

* * *

 _6:12 am  
July 20, 1993  
Sleep-Inn Motel  
San Francisco, CA_

Mulder had set the TV on the local channel and had caught the teaser for the Emily Sims story. He had checked with the guys last night after meeting Scully. He was now certain she had no connection to Krycek, at least not an official one, and hadn't given him the files. The boys had been busy with Krycek and had managed to find a reference to him being assigned to the X files. Mulder had asked them to dig up some more on the X files, never having heard of it before.

He had received an email from Scully this morning stating she had asked a friend who worked on the pediatric floor at San Francisco General who remembered a young girl named Jennifer Marlowe, but that she had been moved during the night to a private facility and now no one could find any records of her in the computer. Mulder wondered how many other little girls appeared and disappeared from hospitals on a regular basis and how many went missing like Emily Sims but were never reported missing.

The guys had promised to keep looking for him along with investigating the mysterious FBI division. His computer beeped, indicating an incoming email. He glanced over at it, but sat up straighter when he realized it was from the guys, pulling the computer towards him he opened it to read it.

The X files seemed to be a division that handled otherwise unsolvable or unexplained crimes. They had found a few cases about UFO sightings, spontaneous combustion, and other weird occurrences listed with an X designation. They weren't sure who was assigned to it, other than it looked like Krycek had been assigned a caseload that included many X files.

Mulder caught the TV announcer mentioned Emily's name and looked up, seeing the story start. It flashed to a picture of Emily and her mom and dad, describing their life in Sacramento. It used the typical TV pathos to describe her disappearance and mother's subsequent suicide from grief, the female reporter said as the camera focused on a picture of Mrs. Sim's face. It made no mention of her possible illness, but as B-roll showed on the screen behind a phone number you could call to report any possible information to the Sacramento police, Mulder caught sight of a familiar face.

Startled he leaned forward. "Well, shit," he said to himself as he looked at the video of Krycek standing on the front porch of the family's home in Sacramento.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

_7:08 pm  
August 3, 1993  
J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building  
Washington, D.C._

With the trail cold on Jennifer Marlowe, the news gone on Emily Sims, no movement on the Jane Does, and the new mystery of Krycek, Mulder had headed back home to Washington to see what he could do from there. He had exchanged a few emails with Scully, but with no new developments and nothing else really in common they had been rather short. Diana had seemed to give up on him again, but he knew that sooner or later she'd try again. He had spent some time with the boys, but that had gotten old too.

As soon as he had arrived back in D.C. he had met with Senator Matheson and had asked him about the X files. For the first time ever he felt as if Matheson was holding back on him. Mulder had requested and had been granted access to a few X files, though, probably due to Matheson's influence. Krycek had been busy and didn't appear to be a half-bad agent if his reports on the pitifully few closed X files were to be believed. Currently, Krycek was investigating a cell of sleepless Vietnam Veterans. Mulder reviewed Krycek's case notes and made the connection between the doctors and the units, but it appeared that Krycek hadn’t yet. This looked like it would be one of the unsolved X files as everyone would probably be dead before Krycek solved it. Mulder had managed to track down an Assistant Director Skinner that Krycek seemed to nominally report to, but he was pretty sure that Skinner wasn't the real head of the X files.

His phone rang. He looked at it, fairly certain it wasn't Diana and the guys never called him.

"Hello?" he said, foregoing his usual greeting including his name and division.

"Hey, it's me," came the female voice over the line. He smiled, recognizing Scully right away.

"Hey."

"I figured you’d still be at work."

"That’s me." Mulder leaned back in his chair, balancing his phone on his shoulder and folding his hands at his waist. "What can I do for you, Doctor Scully?"

"It's probably more what I can do for you."

Mulder was intrigued; he sat up, pulling a notepad and pen towards him.

"The lab work finally came back on a transient that was found at a hotel in town a few days after Jane Doe 19292 was found."

"Oh yeah?" Mulder didn't press her for more information. Scully wouldn't call him unless it was important and since she didn't speculate she had probably made a connection.

"Yeah. He died of acute organ failure. I normally wouldn't have looked much beyond that given his lifestyle, but I decided to run his blood against what we found in Emily's records and Jane Doe's blood work. I'm not sure why I did, but I'm glad I did because his acute organ failure was caused by a similar drug profile, but in much higher doses."

"What?"

"Mulder, those aren't chemical compounds that anyone would think to look for!"

He could tell she was troubled by it, but waited for her to finish knowing she wasn't done yet.

"That wasn't the strangest thing, though," she continued. She sighed before continuing. "Whoever killed him killed Jane Doe and most likely Emily Sims too."

"Scully!" Mulder was shocked at the pronouncement, knowing she didn't speculate, knowing that for her to reach that conclusion, she had to feel confident without a doubt. He grinned, picturing her in this moment.

"The dirt scrapings from underneath his fingernails were the same as the dirt that Jane Doe was buried in," she said. "They've declared the case solved and consider him the murderer. I haven't shared the information about the drug compounds though and I'm fairly certain he didn't kill her – I think he just buried her."

"You think that whoever killed him, killed her," he repeated back, more to just say it out loud to himself than anything else.

"I don't," Scully paused and took a deep breath, collecting herself "Mulder, I just don't know, but I don't know what else to think about it."

They were both silent for a minute, considering the implications of Scully's findings.

"I have to go," Scully said suddenly and she clicked off without saying goodbye. Mulder looked at the now disconnected phone he was holding in his hand, startled at the abrupt end to their conversation. He glanced at the clock and realized she had probably called him from work. He shook his head as he replaced the handset. Scully was smart, forthright, and a damn good medical examiner. She'd make a good FBI agent, he mused to himself as he turned to his computer and opened it to run the program the guys had written for him - to search various law enforcement databases for cases similar to Samantha's and Scully's Jane Doe. He considered sending an email to the guys asking them to add people similar to Scully's transient stiff, but didn't after he realized that the profile would be too large to get any useful information from. They'd have to solve that particular mystery some other way.

The program beeped, letting him know that there had been no knew reports in the week since he last ran it.

* * *

 _7:58 am  
August 4, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

Scully scanned her day's caseload, relieved once again that it didn't contain any John or Jane Does. George had prepared each file last night before he left and she picked them up to scan through them while her computer booted up. She reached for her pen to make a notation in the first case, but it wasn't lying where she left it last night when she had spoken to Mulder on the phone. She scanned her desk, but couldn't tell specifically if anything was out of place. It felt off, nonetheless.

She opened her pencil drawer to grab a pen from the supply she kept in there and looked at where her drawer keys should've been. They weren't there. Frantically, she shuffled things around in her desk. If they were missing then maybe her files were too. She reached for her bottom file drawer; it was unlocked and slid open easily into her hand. With trepidation, she reached back behind the last file and down, reaching for the familiar brush of file folder against her fingertips. All she felt was cold steel drawer.

"Shit," she said, under her breath. She wasn't supposed to have those files in her office and wasn't even supposed to have the Emily Sims or Marin County Jane Doe files, so there wasn't much she could say to her boss. "Shit," she said again, closing the door, trying to decide what to do and wracking her brain as to how they could've gone missing.

Her computer was booted up and she logged on, opening the medical examiner's database program right away. She typed in the transient's John Doe number designation.

 _File not found._

Puzzled, she checked again and typed it in carefully checking before she hit enter.

 _File not found_ appeared again.

She got up and left her office, heading for the file room where the physical files would be. It was a solved case and would've been transferred to storage at this point. She let herself into the room and scanned the file numbers for his. It was gone, she realized. The number belonged to another case now; it wasn't simply missing.

They had only closed the case last night, but they had transported the body a few days after he had come into the morgue to Colma for cremation and burial. She headed across the room to where they kept the transport logs; surely he’d be in there. Currently shipments were being recorded both in the database and on paper. If he had still existed in the electronic records he would've come up in her search, but maybe whoever had deleted the electronic records had forgotten the paper records.

She opened the book to the correct date and scanned the numbers of the bodies transported on the day that her homeless man would have been. When she couldn't find him, she scanned the days before and after his. "It's as if he never existed," she said under her breath when she couldn't find him. She'd call Mulder tonight and let him know what happened, but that didn't solve the problem of her missing files, or how they even went missing.

She headed up the front lobby of the building and the security desk. Smiling in what she hoped was a sweet manner, she had asked if the morgue had any late-night visitors that weren't the night shift dropping off bodies. The young man smiled back. Scully remembered him and was glad for the first time in her life that she always said hello to him whenever she saw him on duty.

"Sure, but just that FBI agent."

"What FBI agent?" Scully asked, knowing that Mulder had been in Washington, D.C. She wasn't aware of any other cases that involved the FBI either right now, and news of those usually traveled.

"Oh, he's been around a few times. Let me pull up the tape for you,"

"Thank you," she said. Waiting as he pulled the tape, put it in the small TV on the desk and started fast forwarding. He stopped at 11:36pm the night before.

"He's never come this late before, but he said he had left something downstairs. I couldn't raise Erik on the radio to come and escort him so I let him go downstairs on his own. I'm not supposed to do that, but I figured since he was FBI…" he trailed off.

Scully watched as a familiar face approached the desk.

"His name sounds Russian, here I have it right here," he pulled the log towards him.

"Krycek," Scully supplied before he had a chance to look at his log.

"Yeah, that's it," he replied looking up at her

"Thank you," Scully said, "I won't say anything."

The security guard smiled sheepishly, "I appreciate it," he said softly.

"Shit," Scully said again, under her breath as she walked away. "Shit," she repeated again for good measure. Although she didn't have any proof she was positive she knew where her files had gone and why her body had disappeared.

* * *

 _11:31 pm  
August 4, 1993  
Hegel Place  
Alexandria, VA_

Mulder sat on his couch and stared at the television. He had grown bored with his porn a little while ago and was now watching a program on the Rift Valley in Africa. A baby wildebeest died a particularly gruesome death at the water hole. The sound of a knock at his door caught his attention. It was soft and quick. He saw a shadow move under his door.

There was a nondescript brown folder sitting on the ground just in front of his door and the hallway was empty. It wasn't the first time he had been passed information this way, but usually he had to ask for it first. He picked up the folder and checked the hallway again, curious as to which one of his contacts may have left it for him.

He tore it open as he resettled himself on the couch, muting the television before pulling out the file folder inside. He opened it to a picture of a smiling woman that looked like it had been snapped candidly on the street. She was pretty and her mouth was open in a half-laugh. Her features reminded him of Scully.

He scanned the documents under the folder. There was a medical form on top, but lacked the woman's name – just a medical identification number. It looked like they had been tracking her for a while based on the dates in the file. They stopped about six years ago with what looked like a series of notes regarding her fertility. He looked on the other side of the folder and found notes about other female medical subjects with many of the same notations about blood pressure, temperature, and menstrual cycles. The women were definitely being tracked.

There was no name of a medical facility or a purpose of the documentation on any of the sheets and it didn't appear that anyone was tracked through a pregnancy. He checked the envelope the folder had arrived in, but it was empty. Mulder looked through the folder again trying to decide if he wanted to call Scully or not regarding the file. He had received an email from her earlier today telling him that her files were missing and that she had evidence Krycek was behind it. It was always a sure sign that you were on to something big if people started stealing your research, Mulder had learned. The guys had also emailed him to let him know that they couldn't track down Jennifer Marlowe. Mulder wondered if she'd show up as a Jane Doe somewhere else before too long.

He decided that Scully might be able to make more sense of the file than he or the guys could. The guys had a copy machine and they'd probably want to see the folder. He turned off the TV and stood up. It was late, but they'd still be up, following the conspiracy trail on the Internet.

* * *

 _6:45 pm  
August 6, 1993  
Scully's house  
San Francisco, CA_

Scully picked up the package that sat just inside her front door after she let herself in her apartment. She carefully scanned it for signs of tampering before chiding herself for being paranoid. If Krycek was going to look at her mail, he'd probably just steal it outright, she thought to herself. She tore it open.

Mulder had called her yesterday to tell her he was overnighting a package to her house. In it were copies of information someone had passed onto him that he was sure was connected to Emily, Jennifer, and the Jane Does and that to him it looked like something to do with fertility given the data and the dates, but could she look it over for him.

Inside was a handful of papers with a picture on top. She looked at it and grew cold.

"Where did you get this?" She demanded as soon as Mulder picked up the phone.

"What?" he asked, confusedly.

"Where did you get this picture, this file?"

"I told you, someone passed it on, Scully."

"Stop with the obfuscating, Mulder, and tell me how you got this!"

"It was left on my doorstep. I don't know who gave it to me. What's wrong, Scully?"

"Do you know who the woman in the picture is?" Scully was growing calmer and the initial shock of the picture was beginning to wear off.

"No," Mulder replied, then added, "do you?"

"Yes." Scully took a deep breath, realizing, perhaps for the first time, that this went so much further than a dead girl in a park and a missing six year old.

"Who is she?" Mulder was curious.

"Her name is Melissa Scully. She is, was, my sister."

"Scully?" Mulder's shock and compassion was genuine. Scully was relieved to hear it, certain now he wasn't aware of the connection.

"Missy died in January during a home invasion robbery gone bad. She was home, at my house, in the middle of the day when someone broke in. They must've surprised her. I found her just inside the doorway."

"Oh, Scully…"

"Mulder, I've read the file. They were tracking Missy's ovulation cycles. The last bit of data seems to indicate that her eggs were harvested."

"Like a fertility treatment?"

"Yes, but I didn't think Missy was undergoing a fertility treatment seven years ago. Mulder, that's not all. Based on the numbers, if this data is indeed right, they took her eggs. All of her eggs. Missy would've been sterile."

Mulder was silent, processing the information.

"Do you know where this data is from?"

"The guys did some snooping for me today. It's from one of the clinics in San Jose that was listed on Emily Sims's medical records. I think it was for fertility treatments her mother was undergoing," he answered her, still trying to comprehend what she had just told him about her sister.

"Do you think Missy could've been Emily's mother, Mulder?"

"It's possible."

Scully was silent as they both contemplated the implications of the medical records.

"I'm coming out there, Scully. I'm coming out there, I want to know what this is all about."

"Ok," she said softly.

"Scully, do you have somewhere to go? Someone who could stay with you?"

Scully smiled, touched at his concern.

"No, I kicked Ethan out a few days ago. I'll be all right, Mulder."

She hung up and picked up the picture of Missy again. She traced her features and sniffed as she started to cry.

Clutching the picture to her chest she sunk to the kitchen floor, weeping silently for her sister.

* * *

 _2:19 pm  
August 7, 1993  
San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

Scully looked up as the phone in autopsy rang. She had just finished an autopsy and was stripping off her gloves. She glanced over at George who was cleaning the table and picked up the phone.

"Autopsy One, this is Doctor Scully," she answered.

"Doctor Scully, I have a phone call for you from an Agent Mulder. He says its urgent," the receptionist on the other end said.

Scully sighed, she didn't particularly want to speak to Mulder right now but she wasn't sure how she could avoid it. "All right," she responded and waited for the click alerting her the call had been transferred.

"Mulder, I don't really have the time-"

"Scully, I'm at the airport, can you come pick me up?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose. She really didn't want to deal with this, with Mulder and the recent revelations about Missy and the wider implications that those connections to her files being stolen meant. She just wanted to go back to a few months ago, before she met an FBI agent named Fox, hell even before she happened to be the one to catch the autopsy of a little girl named Jane Doe.

"Scully?"

"All right," she found herself saying, against her better judgment. "All right, let me take care of a few things here first."

She hung up and could feel George's eyes on her and was thankful for his quiet discretion. He wouldn't ask her what was going on and he wouldn't say anything if she left early.

"George, something has come up, I'm going to leave for the rest of the afternoon. Do you mind?" she gestured to the autopsy.

"No, Doctor Scully," he replied in his soft voice with an equally soft smile. She responded with one of her own. She nodded and then stripped off her smock and put it in the bin, heading for her office.

George would take care of the initial report and just leave it for her to sign in the morning. She shut off her computer and slid her active files into her desk drawer and locked it. George could be trusted, but she wasn't sure she wanted any of her colleagues looking through her desk, or Krycek for that matter if he was still slinking around. She smiled ruefully as she thought about how paranoid she'd become in the last few months. How much more paranoid she probably would become by the time Mulder got to the bottom of his case. Truth is never easy, she thought to herself.

Mulder was standing on the sidewalk with a bag over his shoulder when she drove up. He smiled at her as he got into the car. She couldn't muster one in return.

"Sorry to show up like this, but the news you told me has big implications in my case, Scully. I need to do some more investigation."

"Now, Mulder?"

"Yes, now." He sounded a little puzzled to her.

"Mulder, she may just be a part of your case to you, but she was my sister."

"I know, Scully," he said, with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

Scully felt her defenses start to crumble. "Do you have some place to stay?"

Mulder shook his head in response and Scully nodded, driving towards her apartment. She was relieved enough that she wasn't even bothered by the presumption. She had woken up this morning on the floor of her kitchen. With a houseguest she'd at least have a reason to hold it all together.

Mulder set his bag down just inside her door when she let them in.

"Can I get you anything? Iced tea, beer, water, coffee?" she asked, remembering her manners.

"Whatever you're having."

Scully nodded, heading into the kitchen. "Why don't you order pizza, Mulder, there's a few places on the counter. They all deliver."

She could hear Mulder on the phone as she clinked ice into two glasses and poured the iced tea. Mulder joined her when he was done.

"What can you tell me about her, Scully?"

Scully examined her eyes floating in the glass. One of the cubes had cracked and she examined the lines of the crack before she answered.

"Missy was everything I was not. And more, I suppose."

Mulder waited for her to continue when she stopped.

"She was always a free spirit. I followed my brothers around, always wanting to belong with them, but Missy always did her own thing. She was pretty and feminine and I was a tomboy with a chip on my shoulder. She had boys sneaking into our window when we were in high school.

"Missy went to college and while she always had time for me, she also had her own life separate from the rest of us. I think my mom was the only one who understood her. Even I didn't, but she loved all of us.

Scully wandered into her living room and settled herself on the couch. Mulder followed her.

"Seven years ago, Missy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A bank in Portland where she was living at the time. It was held up by a man named Duane Barry who thought he was an alien abductee. He abducted Missy and disappeared. They found him a day later on a remote mountaintop in eastern Oregon with no sign of Missy. He claimed they had taken her instead of him – which I guess had been his plan all along."

Mulder listened. He remembered the case and Duane Barry, but he couldn't remember the details, which is why he probably never connected the Scully name.

"They found her two days later, naked, shivering and alone up on that mountain top. She had no member of what happened, none at all."

Scully played with the condensation on her glass, encouraging large drops to form and fall down the sides. The ice snapped as it melted.

“She may not have remembered, but her subconscious did,” she finally said after minutes of silence. Mulder’s hand drifted to hers and covered it. She didn’t look at them.

“Missy drifted for four years. She’d get a job and settle down somewhere and I’d get a postcard or a phone call from her saying she was doing really great and how happy she was. Then, something would happen and she’d disappear. The first few times it happened, I panicked. I’d do anything to try to find her, anything at all.”

Mulder squeezed her hand.

“Sometimes I’d manage to find her, usually in another town with another job claiming she’d just forgotten to tell me she’d gotten bored and moved on. Sometimes I couldn’t find her, but I could track her movements. I think she’d have psychotic episodes, post-traumatic stress induced episodes. She’d claim to not remember what had happened between her moments of semi-normalness, but I learned enough from trying to find her.”

Scully laced her fingers with Mulder’s.

“My parents would try to get her help, but she’d never stay in the programs they put her in. Bill claimed she was just a drug addict and wouldn’t talk to her. Charlie, well I don’t know about Charlie - he just disconnected. I don’t think anyone understood.”

Scully jerked at the knock on her door. The pizza, she remembered after a second of panic. Mulder got up and quietly paid the delivery girl. He brought it back and set it on the coffee table. She didn’t even have the strength to protest. He handed her a piece and she began to eat it mechanically.

“Three years ago, she showed up on my doorstep. She told me she was sick of running, sick of having to stay one step ahead of them, and was ready to just stay put no matter what happened. I didn’t tell mom and dad she was here, I just let her be.”

Scully smiled as she remembered those times and how Missy slowly came back to her.

“San Francisco was good to her. She joined an art commune, although she still stayed with me off and on. Eventually, she started talking to mom again and for a while, she was the only member of the family Charlie would talk to. She even mended things with dad. She worked for a regression therapist in Berkeley and sold her art here and there and I think she was happy.”

Scully pointed to her wall and Mulder followed her finger to an abstract painting hanging on her wall. He could see a face with a shock of red hair, a coffee cup, and other things circling about like steam from the cup. He smiled at it and looked at Scully. She was looking at him with a soft smile on her face.

“She painted that for me. Called it ‘Dana’s Morning Coffee’. Despite all this, Missy would never talk about what happened. She always said she didn’t remember. I think she was starting to, though, and just wasn’t ready to talk about it.”

“I looked up the report on her murder,” Mulder finally spoke.

Scully nodded, “I figured you might.”

“It’s still unsolved.”

Scully sighed and nodded again.

“Mulder, I’m afraid of what happened to Missy when she was missing. I’m afraid that it has to do with that clinic and with Emily. I’m afraid of what they did to her.”

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

_7:06 am  
August 8, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

Scully slipped into her office and set her stuff down. She had sat up with Mulder the night before, staring at the television, but not really watching. He must’ve carried her into her bedroom sometime after she had fallen asleep because she woke up in her bed with her shoes off, but still wearing her clothes from the night before. Mulder was sound asleep on her couch with the TV still on. She’d changed and slipped out the door quietly.

Just like she had figured, the autopsy report sat on her desk, mostly filled out by George and awaiting a few of her notations and signature. The building was still fairly quiet and no one was there yet. She would get to the report in a few minutes, but first she had some tests to run. She pulled a folder out of her bag and headed off down the hall.

She let herself into the lab looked around. In the corner, bent over a lab table sat the girl she was looking for. Scully let the door close behind her.

“Hi, Ana,” she said, walking forward. The pretty girl looked up and pushed her glasses up her nose.

“Hi, Doctor Scully,” she responded with a smile. Ana Munoz was studying at UCSF for her doctorate and doing research on DNA testing in the medical examiner’s lab. Scully was Ana’s contact at the office, although the lab director was her research director. “What can I do for you?”

Scully handed Ana the file she was holding. In it contained Melissa’s, Emily’s, and Jane Doe’s DNA profiles, and vial of Scully’s blood collected that morning. She hadn’t intended to test her own blood, but had decided at the last minute to use it as a reference against Melissa’s. “Can you test the DNA in the blood and compare it to the other three profiles and let me know if there is any relation between the profiles?”

“Sure, Doctor Scully, I can get it back to you tomorrow?”

“Thanks Ana. Oh, and can you not say anything about it, either? It’s not part of an official investigation for our office, but rather based on a hunch I have about one of our cases.”

Ana nodded and took the file. The lie was close enough to the truth for Scully. She turned and headed back to her office.

Mulder met her for lunch at a coffee shop downtown. She told him about the profile she had asked Ana to run and he nodded, agreeing with her. Halfway through lunch he tried to casually bring up the topic of Ethan, but could tell from Scully’s rueful smile he hadn’t quite succeeded.

“I met Ethan because he was looking for Melissa.”

Mulder looked at her in surprise.

“He had seen her work in a coffee shop in Berkeley and had come looking for her. I was her last official address. I let him take me out a few times, but I wouldn’t tell him where she was. Eventually I arranged for them to meet. He had put two and two together over the bank robbery and Melissa’s work and was trying to do a story on how violent crime victims move on.

“We didn’t stop going out, even after he met Melissa and he was there for me when she died.”

“And now?” Mulder asked, curious.

“It’s too confusing now, Mulder.”

Mulder nodded at her. Ethan reminded her of Melissa too much and now that everything she knew about Melissa was changing, he could understand her not wanting Ethan around. It was convenient, he thought to himself, not to have to deal with the boyfriend when he slept on her couch.

“I’m going to San Jose this afternoon - I want to see if I can learn anything from that fertility clinic,” Mulder tells her.

“Be careful, Mulder,” she tells him as she leaves him in front of the diner, heading back towards her office.

Her afternoon was quiet and uneventful. She wished it hadn’t been because it gave her too much time to think. Her boss had even noticed as he caught her staring off into space as she sat at her desk. She had jumped when she realized he had been trying to get her attention. Her mind was on the DNA tests with Ana.

Mulder wasn’t at her apartment when she got home, but arrived a few minutes later. He had a stack of pictures with him and breathlessly showed them to her. They were shots of a pretty brown haired nurse coming and going from the office. Her head began to hurt when he told her that he was sure the woman was his sister.

“Mulder...” she had said, before getting up and walking back to her bedroom. She needed a minute to process everything. More than a minute, she decided, she needed a lifetime. His cell phone rang.

When he hung up, she emerged from her bedroom. He was picking up his bag.

“I’m going back to Washington,” he said, looking at her. She nodded, not asking why.

“Scully?”

She looked at him.

He sighed, not knowing what to say.

Finally, “Be careful, ok?” He stepped forward and after a moment’s hesitation leaned forward and kissed her softly on the cheek.

“I’ll call you,” he said, just before he walked out the door.

Scully nodded at the empty space of her living room before spying the pizza box on her coffee table. She sat down heavily on her couch and stared at the blank TV.

* * *

 _10:25 am  
August 8, 1993  
Hart Building, Senator Matheson’s Office  
Washington, D.C._

Mulder walked in to the large and richly decorated office of the senior senator. Matheson sat behind his desk, hands steepled in front of his face.

“I’ve set up a meeting for you with Walter Skinner at the FBI,” the Senator began.

“The AD for the X Files,” Mulder supplied.

Matheson regarded him shrewdly.

“Mulder, I’ve helped you at great personal risk to myself and my career”

Mulder smiled, reminded of the careful negotiations he used to witness between the upper-class in his home state of Massachusetts. No one was a straight shooter and everything involved doublespeak. Matheson was telling him that he owed him. Mulder already knew that and inclined his head in response.

Matheson seemed satisfied. “Skinner will offer you a job on the X files, Mulder. I want you to take it. Your current investigation involving that pretty doctor from San Francisco is interesting to me and I want you in a position with the FBI so you can continue with more investigations.”

And the ‘report back to me about them’, was left unsaid, but was understood by both.

Mulder stood up and reached out to shake the senators hand. He thanked him with a smile and left.

A message to see Assistant Director Skinner right away was waiting for him when he arrived back at the FBI. He found his office quickly and walked in. Skinner sat behind his desk, looking a bit uncomfortable. The source of his discomfort was leaning against a file cabinet to Mulder’s right, smoking a cigarette. The cigarette smoking man nodded at Mulder and Mulder quickly realized that while his meeting was with Skinner, it was the man with the cigarette who was really in charge.

“Agent Mulder,” Skinner said, pulling what Mulder assumed was his personal file towards him. “I’ve had an opening in a small division I oversee. It’s called the X Files.”

“I’m aware of the division,” Mulder said quickly, establishing the fact that he was aware of what was going on despite the fact that the meeting was most likely meant to be intimidating.

Skinner seemed genuinely surprised, but the cigarette smoking man just smiled and took another drag on his cigarette.

“You’ll be assigned as senior agent to the X files with Agent Alex Krycek under you starting tomorrow,” Skinner continued.

“No.” Mulder interrupted. Now it was the cigarette smoking man’s turn to look surprised. Skinner didn’t, though, and smiled ruefully. Mulder reconsidered Skinner.

“Then who do you propose?” The man said.

Mulder looked at him, and then back at Skinner, who was considering him.

“Come to me with Krycek’s replacement tomorrow and we’ll discuss it,” Skinner answered, staring hard at Mulder. Mulder knew that he’d be supported by Skinner and nodded. The cigarette smoking man let them have the victory, although Mulder knew that he didn’t have to. He looked at him and considered. There was something much bigger at work here, he decided, and Skinner and himself were just pawns. Perhaps even Matheson and the cigarette smoking man were too.

Mulder stood up and nodded. Skinner handed him a folder.

“You’ll find all the information you need in there. The office is in the basement.”

Mulder turned and left without looking at the man in the corner again. He opened the folder just outside Skinner’s office door and looked at the key inside. He knew who he was going to ask to work with him.

* * *

 _8:05 am  
August 9, 1993  
San Francisco City Medical Examiner's Office  
San Francisco, CA_

Doctor Scully slipped into her office and set her briefcase down. A plain manila folder sat on top of her inbox and she knew immediately what it was. Bless Ana, she thought. She sat down and pulled the folder towards her, wondering briefly if she should call Mulder before she opened it. Opening the contents of the folder does not change anything, she said to herself, the truth was in there and whether I see it or not will not change the fact that it is still the truth.

I want to believe, she told herself, and opened the folder.

She wasn't shocked, or even really surprised. The profiles of Emily and Jane Doe matched Melissa's and showed quite clearly that they were her daughters. It also showed that she was a close female relation. She was an aunt to at least two murdered nieces that she never even knew she had. Scully took a deep breath and jumped slightly as her phone rang. She picked it up.

"Scully," she said, half expecting Mulder to be on the other end. She felt her heart drop though when she heard her boss on the other end, summoning her into his office. Looking down at the DNA results in front of her she knew that nothing good come of this.

Walking in to the office and seeing Krycek there casually leaning against the file cabinets did nothing to quell the ominous feelings that she was about to really not like the following conversation.

"Doctor Scully," her boss began, friendly enough, but Krycek's smile was predatory. "I understand you worked with the FBI on a recent case, Jane Doe 19292?" he asked, opening the familiar file on his desk.

"Yes, Agent Mulder contacted me and I answered his questions regarding Jane Doe."

"And a Jane Doe from Marin?"

Scully shifted slightly, caught off-guard by the question. Krycek gaze never wavered from her. "I consulted with my college in Marin County regarding a case with similar characteristics to our Jane Doe."

"At the FBI's request?" he asked, steel in his voice.

"At Agent Mulder's request, sir," she answered carefully.

"Do you do many things at Agent Mulder's request?" he asked, folding his hands in front of him on the table.

Suddenly Scully was aware of exactly what this meeting was about. She looked at Krycek and narrowed her eyes. He met her gaze. She broke it to look back at her boss.

"I assisted Agent Mulder within the bounds of my job here as a medical examiner for the city and county of San Francisco."

"I see," came the curt reply.

Scully knew she was burning a bridge.

"Well, then," he said, sitting up and looking up at Agent Krycek. "I suppose you have a choice to make Doctor Scully. You can either go back to your office, and we can forget this whole little incident occurred including any work with the FBI. Or, you can clear out your desk and find a new position. With our full support, of course."

"Of course," she repeated carefully, perfectly aware of what was being offered to her. She thought for a moment, gaze slipping to Krycek's smug smile and her boss's painful gaze.

Dad's going to kill me, she thought to herself.

"Sir, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity you've given me. I'll work with George to finalize any outstanding reports I have and have my desk cleared out by the end of the day." She stood up and nodded to Krycek. Your move, she thought. He gave her a calculating look, but didn't seem as surprised and she thought he would. Her boss looked vaguely disappointed.

"Doctor Scully," he started.

"Thank you, Doctor Scully," Krycek interrupted. Her boss looked uncomfortable.

She nodded and turned to leave but paused on the thresholds. “Tell me, Agent Krycek,” she asked softly, looking at him with cold fire glinting in her eyes. “What happened to Jennifer Marlowe?”

Krycek’s smile was cold and calculating. “I don’t see how that’s any of your concern, doctor,” he replied.

Scully nodded once and strode out of the office with her head held high.

George was waiting for her in her office.

"Ana told me she saw you disappear into the boss's office right after that creepy FBI agent did," he said at her questioning look.

She gave him a soft smile. "Do you think we can wrap everything up by the end of the day, George?"

George nodded. "So that's it then?"

"That's it," she replied.

George nodded and stood. "Doctor Scully, if there is anything…"

Scully smiled at him and shook her head.

"Right. Well then, I'll be back with files for you to sign, Doctor Scully. We can go over any outstanding cases before the end of the day."

"Thank you, George."

George shut the door behind him. Scully let her shoulders fell. Doing the right thing, taking the high road, whatever this was that she was doing was not going to be easy.

Her phone rang and she eyed it unsure if it was worth it. She snatched it in the middle of the second ring.

"Scully," she said.

"Hey," came the familiar voice on the other end.

"Hi," she said sounding a bit more relieved than she meant to.

"Scully, I have a proposition for you. Take all the time you need to think about it, but I hope you'll say yes."

"To what, Mulder?"

"I've been put at the head of a division here at the FBI that investigates the unsolvable cases. Cases like Jane Doe and Emily's and others."

"Congratulations," she said.

"I get to pick any agents I want to work with me," he began.

Scully was silent, not sure where he was going.

"With a medical degree already, you could be fast-tracked through the training at Quantico."

"Mulder," she said, warningly.

"I could really use someone with your expertise, Scully. And scientific mind."

"Mulder," she started, preparing her argument as to why she couldn't move out to D.C. join the FBI, and start working for him in the unsolvable division. Then she stopped and looked down at the DNA profiles of Jane Doe and Emily staring back at her.

"Scully?' he asked.

The truth is out there.

* * *


End file.
